It’s generally thought that during the early days of the Internet, one of the biggest hurdles to people buying things online was the absence of a secure method for doing so. Some websites tried to accept credit card information directly, but from a buyer’s perspective this was fraught with uncertainty and insecurity (and it can be cost-prohibitive for small websites to comply with all the laws surrounding the protection of credit card information).

When PayPal started to gain acceptance in the late 1990s, everything changed. Once an individual was able to make that first secure transaction, or to send money to a friend online, they became much more comfortable doing so in the future.

Google has entered the online payments space with its new Google Wallet service. Google Wallet can be thought of as a virtual wallet that stores your credit card information on Google’s secure servers, and makes it easy for you to purchase products and services from online merchants who accept Google Wallet.

This service also has a big distinguishing feature in that Google is actively signing up “bricks and mortar” stores to accept Google Wallet, so that an individual who has a Google Wallet apps on their NFC enable smart phone can pay for any purchases simply and quickly by tapping their phone at the point-of-sale.

New users can sign up for a Google Wallet account by going to www.google.com/wallet and signing in with their existing Google or Gmail account (or creating a new Google account if they don’t already have one). Once you provide the necessary credit card information, and install the app on your smartphone if you’re using that method of payment, you’re ready to go.

If you’re an online business that is looking to accept Google Wallet as a method of payment, there are two ways of doing so. You can process the payments yourself, or you can have Google do the payment processing. Note that if you don’t currently accept credit card payments online, and don’t have an existing payment processor, you may want to have Google process the payments so that you can avoid having to integrate two new services instead of one.

The current fee structure is similar to (and in some cases less expensive than) other online payment services. If your monthly sales are less than $3,000, you can expect to pay 2.9% of that amount, plus $0.30 per every transaction. When your monthly sales exceed $100,000, the fees dropped to 1.9% of the total sales, plus $0.30 per transaction. There are several other price breaks for monthly sales between those amounts. If you elect to have Google process the payments, installing this method of payment is as simple as integrating a “Google Wallet” button on your website.

Because there’s no upfront cost to doing so, and your customers would likely welcome another payment option, it’s worth taking a look at Google Wallet for your business.